John Henry Dearle Prints

About John Henry Dearle

John Henry Dearle was born in Camden Town, north London, in 1859, and joined Morris & Co. in 1878 as an assistant in its Oxford Street showroom. He moved to the glass-painting workshop, studying design in the afternoons, and William Morris, seeing his drawing, took him on as his tapestry apprentice; in 1883 Dearle wove the firm's first figural tapestry. He went on to train the tapestry apprentices and to draw the flowering meadows and foliage behind Edward Burne-Jones's figures in the great tapestries. In the late 1880s he began designing repeating patterns for wallpaper and cloth, and by 1890 he was the firm's chief designer, supervising the weaving and printing works at Merton Abbey. After Morris died in 1896 Dearle became art director of Morris & Co., and he ran Merton Abbey until his own death in 1932. For decades his work was sold under Morris's name, and several of the best-loved Morris papers, among them Golden Lily, are his. His designs keep Morris's naturalism but add a richer, more ornamental line, with Persian and Turkish influences in the later patterns, which gives them a slightly grander, more formal presence on a wall.